True Confessions of an Originaljoesnake

She was like my little junior version of Alias, playing dress up to rectify a classmate’s dilemma. She was smart and sassy and always solved the case. Now, she’s gone.

[The] CW… has canceled cult favorite “Veronica Mars” to the consternation of its small but passionate audience.

I’d stake you out any day, Veronica.

The show Veronica Mars, starring Kristen Bell, just got the axe from the CW ending months of speculation that the show would well, get the axe. While I never once watched the show on the CW (I watched on DVD and youtube. After the show was removed from youtube, I watched here), which might have something to do with the show no longer being on the CW, V. Mars was my guilty TV watching pleasure.

It started out like this: I thought the show would be dumb and girly but gave it a try. Hey, Kristen Bell is easy on the eyes. Then, a few shows later I was hooked. I loved the way Veronica would pretend to be someone’s friend to solve a case and along the way she might help them with personal problems, but by the next episode they were gone and V had moved onto a newer and exciting case. No moral messages, Veronica Mars was the anti-Spiderman. Logan Echols never got in the way of her obligation to fight injustice. Sure, there’d be glimpses here and there of the horrible emotional trauma that should be experienced when people’s mothers abandon them, they’re switched at birth, they get date raped, their mom jumps off a bridge, or they cope with the death of their best friend, but it never got in the way of making sure Wallace played in the big game or Veronica making sure she got down to the bottom of what really happened at Madison Sinclair’s party. Never was this more evident than when she solved the campus rape mystery and by the time the very next show rolled around, she was on the case of a disappearing monkey.

While awesome shows should never end before their time, I think Veronica would want us to move onto the next case, just as she would. After 3 years of solving problems, mysteries, and crime in Neptune, it’s not really a surprise that now there is no more to solve. Schemers and crooks knew what was up. Still, I’ll pour a forty out for you V. Mars and dream about the kind of mysteries and hi-jinks that would happen between us if I lived in Neptune or went to Hearst.

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So, Spiderman 3 made approximately a bajillion dollars this past weekend, and I was one of the many who packed the theaters to help the movie break box office records. 

Reviews are claiming that the movie drags, it’s corny, spiderman fights too many villians, there’s too much going on, etc. While I didn’t think the movie was amazing, I was certaintly entertained for the whole two-and-a-half hours.  Too many villians? Maybe, but the way I see it, Spiderman’s real on screen enemies weren’t who you’d think. First off, I’m usually not too worried about Spiderman prevailing, no matter how much the odds seem to be sacked against him. Things may look rough at around the midpoint of the movie, but no worry, Spidey will be victorous come the end of the epic battle at the film’s climax. Sandman, one of the villians, is Lowell from Wings. That’s nothing to be scared of. The other villian is Eric from that 70’s show, who couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag, also nothing to be scared of. The only other “traditional” enemy Spiderman faces is his sometimes crazy, sometimes not, always hunky Harry AKA Green Goblin Jr. and you know he’ll come around eventually near the end of the movie.

So, who’s Spiderman facing off against in this overproduced, overhyped, overmarketed blockbuster? Advertisements would have you believe, based on one of the film’s tag lines, that Spiderman’s “greatest battle lies… within”. Couldn’t be further from the truth. Peter Parker’s main problem is his on-again off-again girlfriend and love interest Mary Jane Watson, played by the alarmingly average, sometimes fugly Kristen Dunst. Spiderman basically busts his ass all day saving people anonymously, squeaking by a meager existence in order to do so, while working his butt of in grad school and all Mary Jane can do is whine and bitch he doesn’t understand her. When Spiderman gets a moment to be appreciated for all he does, here comes Mary J. again, crashing in on Spidey just as his typical arch-nemises would, crying up a storm about how she’s underappreciated.

Spiderman… Your girlfriend… WOOF!

The evil super-villians aren’t the ones getting in the way of Spiderman’s ability to save the city, it’s M.J. She constantly F’s with Peter’s mind throughout the whole movie and manipulates him into thinking he’s the one who’s done something wrong. Hate to say it M.J., but the best thing for Spiderman and the whole city would be if the next time an aspiring evil genius ties you up someplace high, you’d just fall to your death.

When Mary Jane Dunst breaks it off with Spiderman, he goes and gets all angst-ridden on us. This basically means some corny squences of Tobey Maguire trotting down the street with his hair brushed into his face, instead of slicked back, eyeliner on his eyes, which all indicate he’s “dark” and troubled. Adding to Spiderman’s troubles is the fact that he’s packed on the pounds since his younger days, as in addition to his new black spider suit, he’s also sporting a double chin. It’s interesting to note that while in the first Spiderman the audience got plenty of shots of Tobey, muscles rippling with his shirt off, in Spiderman 3 the cameras never pan below Maquire’s shoulders indicating Spiderman loves to attack all the goodie baskets little old ladies send him after he helps them cross the street.

It’s my duty as Spiderman to eat each and every sweet morsel the good citizens of New York send me!

Yes, the deck is stacked against Spiderman again. He’s fat and troubled and it can all be traced back to one Ms. Kristen Dunst.  While M.J. is annoying as hell, the moviemakers packed good-looking women into just about every other scene, as extras, secretaries and secondary love-interests in an attempt to make up for the damage Dunst inflicted onto the screen.

Overall, I thought Spiderman 3 was a good movie that as far as summer blackbusters go, was great. You’ve got your action and suspense, your corny laughs that play to the crowd, and your cheesy shots of Spiderman swinging past the American flag. Was it just me, or was the scene where Spiderman takes the blonde out to the jazz club and dances all over tables and the bar a homage to the classic Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy? I think so.

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As a Browns fan, you have to love what the team did this past Saturday on draft day.  The selection of Joe Thomas was surprising, not because it was a bad choice, but because the experts and pundits had all identified Brady Quinn as the player the Browns would nab. Adrian Peterson was also in the mix, but seemed to drop out because of lingering concerns about his injuries.

“There may have been a couple of guys who haven’t panned out, but I’m a vastly different person,” [Joe Thomas] said. “My attitude and my competitiveness will not let me fail.”

Savage is hopeful that getting a premier left tackle and quarterback could change Cleveland’s luck.

Nothing against Brady Quinn, I’ve discussed this before, he just seems a little too in love with himself. He reminds me of a guy a went to high school with, who incidentally got “Rongered” at a Cleveland Lumberjacks game and liked to take his shirt off while working out. I wouldn’t have wanted them to take Brady at #3, but I like getting him at #22.

So the Browns drafted Thomas, who seems about as bad ass as they come. This guy went fishing instead of come to the draft hoopla and while Quinn was sweating it out over slipping further down into the first round, Joe was relaxing on a fishing boat with his dad. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a pinch of chew in his cheek and or threw back a beer or two while Brady’s high school sweetheart tried to mentally calculate the millions she’d lost out on.

The Browns should be commended, as they have been almost unanimously by every media outlet and expert for having a successful draft. Brady slipped and they pulled the trigger on a risky deal to land him in a brown and orange uniform. Phil Savage had to give up next year’s 1st round pick, as well as the team’s upcoming second rounder, but he got two of the higher profile players in the draft. He got the quarterback he identified as the Browns quarterback of the future in essence one year earlier than he would have if he’d kept next year’s pick, so if Brady pans out it’s a genius move. The Browns also drafted Eric Wright, a talented but troubled cornerback who some deemed a risky pick, but could come in and play right away. More than that, instead of playing it safe, Savage approached the draft with a swing for the fences mentality. If Brady Quinn turns out to be a star, football will look back on the moves Savage made in this draft and write about them as they were godlike. I love the gamble because really, what do the Browns have to lose? Worst case scenario is they continue to suck. My little league coaches taught me this early on, if you’re going to strike out, you might as well give it your best shot and swing your bat as hard as you can. If we’re going to suck, we might as well go down swinging.

“This will probably be the day that defines the Browns’ turnaround, if indeed it does happen,” Savage said. “We actually have a chance to do something. All this (bad) luck is a bunch of junk. We’re going to do it, just give us a chance.”

I love the Browns picking Brady Quinn at #22 instead of #3. Here’s a guy who actually wanted to play for Cleveland. Although it’s hard for me to forget the hair and the cockiness of Quinn, he’s been taking taunts from fans and media for years already about his perceived homosexuality and his inability to win the big game. He’s taken all this in stride and even after a frustrating draft day in which he got criticised and booed for everything from his hair to his tie in front of a national audience, he sucked it up and said the things that pros are supposed to say.

Here’s a guy who wants to play for the Browns and wants to win. Will that translate into on field success? Time will tell, but being selected a lot lower than expected, Brady will know he still has a lot to prove and he’ll have a chip on his shoulder. If Brady can play, fans in Cleveland will forget the abercrombie poses and the cockiness and embrace him. After all, don’t Browns fans want to see one of their own lead their team to victory? Throwing the winning touchdown pass is something I dreamed of too wearing my Bernie Kosar jersey when I was young, only Brady Quinn will actually get the chance to do it. The pressure to perform immediately on pick #22 is less than it would have been had he been picked #3. Which is good for Browns fans because for better or worse, the hopes and dreams of a franchise, the success of the team for years to come, the jobs of Crennell and Savage, rest on Quinn’s shoulders.

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